government executive staff reporter sean michael newhouse on the impact of the government shutdown, based on american's zip code and political affiliation. then, time politics reporter nik popli will preview the white house and news of the day. later, philip joyce on how the government shutdown has expanded president trump's power over fiscal and budgetary matters. "washington journal" starts now. ♪ host: good morning. monday, october 20 7, 20 25, day 27 of the government shutdown. we will talk about the latest impacts at home and discuss president trump's trip to asia for his meeting with japanese officials and close to signing a new trade deal with china. of course, we want to hear from you on the phone lines, split by

political party. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. we have a special line for federal workers, (202) 748-8003. you can send us a text or catch up with us on social media. facebook.com/c-span and on x at @cspanwj. a good monday morning to you. president trump is in tokyo today, arrived earlier this morning, meeting with the emperor of japan today and the new japanese prime minister. that meeting set for tomorrow. all eyes looking towards thursday and south korea. president trump is expected to meet with the chinese president, xi jinping, at that asia-pacific economic cooperation summit

taking place. headlines on that front from the front page of today's "washington post," trade deal with china now in reach. this stage set for that trump-xi meeting. the treasury secretary says the u.s. and china have reached a framework for the trade agreement. he talked about that on " meet the press" yesterday. [video clip] >> president trump has a great deal of negotiating leverage with the threat of 100% tariffs on november 1, and i believe we have reached a substantial framework that will avoid that and allow us to discuss many other things with the chinese. i think we will be able to discuss them helping us get this terrible fentanyl crisis under control. i think we're going to be able to discuss substantial soybean and ag purchases for our

american farmers. i think we will be able to assess more balanced trade. i will not get into the two leaders, but i think they will also be discussing president trump's global peace plan that he has been so successful at, both here and -- here in asia, the middle east, and now looking to ukraine-russia. >> you set a couple significant things. it sounds like you are saying you're not anticipating a one hundred percent tariff against china on november 1, and it seems like you are saying china is poised to purchase soybeans to open up those markets again? >> i believe that we have the framework for the two leaders to have a very productive meeting for both sides, and i think it will be fantastic for u.s. citizens, for u.s. farmers, and for the country in general. >> ok, but you are not anticipating the 100% tariffs?

>> no, i am not. and i am also anticipating that we will get some kind of a deferral on the rare earth export controls that the chinese had discussed. host: treasury secretary scott bessent yesterday on "meet the press." much more on trade this week as we could closer to that meeting, expected on thursday and south korea. more speculation about the president's overseas trip, at this from the "new york times." speculation donald trump may meet with north korea's leader kim jong-un on this trip. mr. trump has met with him three times, in 2018 and 2019 and has said he would like to see mr. kim again, boasting of their great relationship on friday as he boarded air force one. he said he would like to meet with mr. kim. we will see if that takes place

this week. talking about president trump's overseas trip to asia. but it is also day 27 at the government shutdown, and talking about the impacts here in the united states. that was also the topic of some conversations on the sunday shows yesterday. it was on sunday morning futures on fox news yesterday, the treasury -- transportation secretary sean duffy talked about the impacts of the shutdown on u.s. air travel. [video clip] >> my job is to keep the airspace safe, so if i do not feel i have enough controllers that are focused, we will slow down traffic. we will stop traffic. that is why you see delays in the system. job number one is to get people where they are going safely. if it is not on time, call the democrats, called chuck schumer if you're frustrated if you have a staffing shortage in your flight is delayed or canceled, call chuck, called democrats, because this is the reason why. >> sounds like it is going to be

a rough week ahead for trump, -- for travel, and it may impact some of the holiday travel we are expecting going into thanksgiving. >> no, i think you are right, as we look forward -- again, there is travel for sports, for holidays, and what i love about president trump -- again, i love that it showed him dancing and having a good time, president trump cares about the american people and is trying to minimize the impact at the democratic shutdown and the american people. but i cannot stop the frustration everett eric -- of air traffic controllers and cannot find the money to pay them. you mentioned snap and subsidies, these are real pains americans will feel because of the democrats. and president trump has done all he can to minimize it, that there is nothing else he can do. in the end, you have to tell democrats to start focusing on american citizens, be a maga

for a moment. host: democratic senators also heading to the sunday shows. senator chris murphy of connecticut was speaking on cnn about the latest on the shutdown. this is what he had to say. [video clip] >> the new york times reported that the private donor they gave president trump millions to pay u.s. troops during a shutdown, that it was billionaire timothy mellon, and it appears to violate federal law. what about americans who think it is president trump, not democrats, doing this? >> i think one of the reasons president trump is refusing to negotiate is because he likes the fact that the government is closed, because he thinks he can exercise king-like powers. he can open parts of the government he wants, he can pay the employees who are loyal to him. i mean, this is a leader trying

to transition our government from a democracy to something much closer to a totalitarian state. so this is part of what happens in totalitarian states, the leader of the regime only decides what gets funded and what does not. and oligarch friends. so i do not want to live in a world in which donald trump and a handful of billionaires decide which part of government works and which don't, which is why i would rather have him at the negotiating table tomorrow so we can reopen the government and be the democratically elected government decide. host: senator chris murphy yesterday on cnn. in terms of what gets funded and does not, here is an article from the "new york times." food banks nationwide are bracing for an overwhelming need as snap cut off limbs, noting no end in sight to the government shutdown. funding for the nation's largest food assistance program known as

snap will disappear at the start of november, according to the department of agriculture friday, the trump administration sent a memo that it would not have contingency funds to keep payments flowing to states. that means roughly 42 million americans who rely on snap may soon have to find other ways to feed themselves and their families. one of the headlines from day 27 of the government shutdown. taking your phone calls on the government shutdown, on the president's trip overseas. we can talk about either in this first hour of the "washington journal." democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. federal employees, we have been chatting with you throughout the shutdown, the number for you to call is (202) 748-8003. we start in oklahoma, line for democrats. this is cal.

go ahead. caller: yes, on the trip to the far east, i am not encouraged by the treasury secretary's description of what is coming, which is a framework for a discussion. that sounds like a two-step process before anybody gets serious about resolving the purposes of that trip more directly -- of that trip. more directly, on the shutdown, where more people live out here in red oklahoma, people have a habit of wanting to eat every day, children especially. what is coming is a real nightmare. so the 42 million americans who rely on the snap for their food, that is the reality of that.

secondly, on the issue of the premiums expiring on 31 december, that will affect millions of the most desperate people when it comes to health care. what i just said, everybody knows, and here's my prediction, the congress will finally, because of the numbers now involved, will find a compromise . it may take another week or two, but there will be a compromise because republicans cannot live in 2026 with the kinds of damage that will be done if snap or the medicaid premiums are not addressed. that is my projection. i am a longtime observer and thank you for taking my call. host: as the clock ticks down on the obama care subsidies, the headline -- a headline today,

what is your prediction for when this ends? open enrollment begins november 1 in most states, and many have sent notices informing consumers that they will have to pay more out of pocket for their insurance costs. caller: my prediction is that, although both parties talk about the fear and damage that will be done to our children and grandchildren with a $37 trillion national debt, neither party really means that. they look barely passed tomorrow, let alone what is going to happen to their children and grandchildren. so what i predict is a middle ground of the worried the republicans express, the cost of the premium extensions, $1.5 trillion, sounds like a big number, it is, but they have never hesitated to add dramatically to the national debt. the democrats will say we won

and it will be extended for, what, six months, a year, whatever, at a cost of something less than $1.5 trillion? and then they will focus on what they really want to focus on, and that is getting the hell home for thanksgiving. again, thank you for the opportunity to speak. host: this is doug, independent. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? well, i got a problem with the trump shutdown, it is pretty bad because he leaves the country so he don't get the blame. but he has his mini me over here keeping congress shut down. mike johnson. they are really going to hurt the american people. they don't care. all they care about his tax breaks for the rich. the poor, they could care less. my law -- my wife and i both would have died without

obamacare, and thank god we had it. i am telling you right now, trump has been trying to get rid of obama care since 2017, and the idiot cannot do it. still, the country needs those supplements. shutting down snap benefits for the super poor, that is ridiculous. he is going to pull it out at the last second and give it to them. that is just ridiculous, because i know donald trump and he is an idiot all the way, always has been, always will be. host: got your point. he mentioned speaker mike johnson. we are scheduled to hear from him at 10:00 a.m. eastern time. that is after this program. we will head up to capitol hill, the speaker holding a press conference, as he does most weekdays, as he has during the government shutdown. the senate today is expected to be in at 3:00 p.m. eastern.

so the congress back in action and plenty to watch on the c-span networks. this is roberta here in d.c., line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. good morning to all patriots and proud americans, which i am. i think we are going through a dark time, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. evil spirits cannot continue forever, and think about people and their children before you think about the millionaires. they are fine. think about the poor people and the sick people in america today. they need a hand, which america has always given. thank you for taking my call. host: to west virginia, david, independent. you are next. caller: good morning. all these confused people out there they keep saying this is the republican and trump

shutdown do not understand that the democrats, all they had to do was give the republicans eight votes so they could bring it to a vote or they did not have to vote for this resolution, the democrats. the republicans would have passed it with 52, 53, there would be no shutdown. ok? also, when they do this eventually an open of the government, into november, this one in's, they will beat -- this one ends, they will be shutting it down. democrats will not allow it to come to the floor. they will shut it down again. host: so you think we are in a cycle of shutdowns? caller: of course, and we have been doing it for years. i blame the republicans, too, after some period of time because they should be forced to do away with the stupid rule, which is actually the congress'

liar insurance, the 60 votes. once they bring it to the floor, democrats normally do not vote for the issue. the majority party, the republicans, have to pass the legend initially -- the legislation. we play this game every year. republicans need to change the rules, open the government. and i blame them now because i need to open the government. and they play this again at the end of november, play it again during christmas, during the midcycle election. it is a game. they need to change it. host: on the filibuster issue, supporters of the filibuster say this is one mechanism that the legislative branch has to force some compromise, to force at least some members to work together, unless, of course, one party has a super majority and

has 60 votes without needing the other side. caller: sir, that is why we are at almost $38 trillion in debt. eventually, we are going to have to go bankrupt because of compromise. thank you, and, republicans, change the rule, pass it, otherwise you will not play this game every year. have a nice day, sir. host: that is david in west virginia. you mentioned holidays. the expected length of the shutdown. congresswoman anna paulina luna, republican from florida, was also on sunday morning futures yesterday saying this could extended to the holidays. [video clip] >> behind the scenes, here we potentially might not be back until even around the thanksgiving timeframe or after. as you know, the military is going without paychecks

potentially. we have the snap program potentially going up into the holiday season. it will be on the chopping block here, all because chuck schumer is afraid of aoc and her polling numbers for the senate. >> thanksgiving, not back until around thanksgiving? what will that mean in terms of funding government? do you do a continuing resolution into next year? obviously, that makes november 21 null and void. >> that is what i am hearing on back end conversations with members of the democrat party. that is the rumor on the hill now, and i would prefer to be back. we have worked we are unable to do because we are not in session. there are a lot of constituent services that are hard to provide to our residents here and across the country as a result of the government shutdown. i think that would push us to another cr. host: that from the sunday morning futures on fox news yesterday. it is the "washington journal" this morning.

we're talking about government shutdown, day 27, and president trump's overseas trip to asia. some movement yesterday on a potential trade deal with china, all eyes on that meeting between president trump and xi jinping expected thursday this week. phone lines as usual, democrats, republicans, and independentss, and a special line for federal employees. good morning. caller: i am a retired federal worker, and i hear people talking about the president needs to get involved and the democrats are saying this, republicans saying this. this is the truth, the democrats, and i am a democrat, are the ones that actually, in the senate side, shut down the government. they did not vote for the continuing resolution, except for three of them. one is the senator of pennsylvania, federman. so they have to get together and

stop holding the americans hostage. we are about to have people without food come, what, november one, which is the end of this week. and that is ridiculous. it is not worth it. plus, the health care companies have already said you are way past the deadline for them to change the costs they are going to give out to the public for the health care. so november 1, open season. they need to get together. i know they keep saying the president needs to come back. but the power of the purse is with the congress, not the president. you all talk about this president being the king, but if you want him to solve this problem, you're making him a king. this has got to stop in america. i want to the democrats to fight, but i want them to fight in and negotiating away like i

did when i was a union president. they are constantly bickering, democrats and republicans. this has got to stop, and america has to stop accepting it. that is all i have to say. host: this is tina out of maryland, republican. good morning. caller: yes, i am of the opinion that if we do not stop behaving the way we are now, it will be like the french revolution where the poor people are asking for food and the rich people are king and queen, eating their cake. how can you eat cake if you do not have money to buy k? how can you do it without the flour and sugar? you cannot do things without a united front, and this country does not have it at this time, so we will be in a place where

we are like the french revolution and most revolutions. the rich get richer and have a disdain for the poor. the poor need to get something else, and they have disdain for the rich. there has to be middle ground. people are dying, people are hungry, people need to have something to look forward to. and it is not that ballroom at the white house, and it is not the, what do you call it, the big bill? it is the people in the united states who are suffering, all colors. i do not care what you look like, where you live, if you are not richer in a powerful position, you will have to eat cake but you cannot find stuff to make it with. host: that is tina in maryland. some additional news on the president's trip to asia, this is from the "new york post" story. the u.s. and china have

finalized a deal to transfer the american version of tiktok to new owners. scott bessent also announcing that on sunday. president trump was asked about that in the trade deal with china when he was on air force one earlier today. this was ahead of landing in tokyo to meet with the emperor of japan. [video clip] >> we might, we might. that will be one of the things we are discussing. it has been approved recently. we got an original approval from presidency, i expect we will, but i would rather wait few days. >> [inaudible] >> [inaudible] tariffs on china -- >> i do not want to tell you what the understanding is, because what we understood yesterday or two days ago or even today is not necessarily what it will be in two days. we are going to have a great

talk. i have a lot of respect for president xi. we like each other a lot and i think he respects me and our country a lot. i think we will have a successful transaction for both countries. host: president trump there, you can see marco rubio, secretary of state, in the background of that discussion. also scott bessent joining him. and then at the president's left arm in the conversation he was having, jamieson greer, key figure, u.s. trade representative, was also joining president trump there as he was speaking to reporters on air force one. again, the president is in japan today, heading to south korea. on thursday, that is where that expected meeting between the president and xi jinping will take place, and it will be tracked closely throughout the week. taking your phone calls. tom in ohio, democrat. good. caller: good morning.

this is the old 90-year-old hillbilly. i think it is just a shame the way this government works. i used to live in west palm, my wife lived there from 1953 through 1988. her sister was in school the same time psycho don was in school. it is just a shame he can run all over the country. he talked about the debt, well, he contributed over $8 trillion his first four years, and he is on track to make it to chill -- 12 trillion dollars this time. it is just a shame and a disgrace. i just feel sorry for my 11 great grandkids. john, it is just a shame that we let the parties dominate the whole world like we do.

thank you very much. host: that is tom out of ohio. this is brian out of west point, georgia, independent. good morning. caller: good morning. i was thinking about both subjects today. one, the government shut down, unfortunately, we are in a time period where i think americans really need to educate themselves and understand what the underlying issues are with the idea of a single-payer health care system, which is what the affordable care act, obamacare, was really pushing us in the direction of. and when you see single-payer systems like, let's say, in the u.k. with nhs, the level and degree and amount of taxes that people pay in order to have such a system is the equivalent of

what we're going to see with the rise and spike in premiums for health care costs. because there is the unfortunate effect of the system called a death spiral were government provided health care for poor people, for sicker people, causes the cost per person to rise individually. so what we are seeing now is the government working to try and remove private workers from their own private employers health care system. host: how do you get your health care insurance? caller: i actually do not have health care insurance. i am self-employed, and it is too expensive for even me to try and do it as an individual. host: have you tried to go

through the federal system and find a plan? caller: absolutely. it is not financially feasible. that is a decision i think the people continue to have to make, especially in a scenario like mine of self-employment where you do not get the subsidies or the assistance of an employer. and as premium costs and expenses have continued to rise, it is cheaper to essentially pay for health care costs and things out of pocket, to cover simple prescription costs, things like that. host: when is the last time you had health insurance? caller: about five years ago. and paying out-of-pocket has worked for you? caller: i do not like it as i get older every year and become

more and more concerned about this model for my life because as we do get older our needs for access to health care increase. but, as i said, the feasibility and the way the finances work out is just not possible at this moment. paying $350 a month for health care insurance versus approximately $150 a month and what it cost for me to be able to visit mike primary care physician -- host: are those roosters crowing? caller: that was my morning alarm, second alarm. but this particular situation, paying $150 for me to be able to visit my primary care physician

versus about 350 dollars a month for health care premium costs once you add in deductible payments, it just does not work out and that is an unfortunate side effect of the idea of having a government funded government option where i absolutely believe health care is a human right. people should have access and ability to be able to get health care, but we cannot. it is so hard to deal with when -- especially if we are bringing in illegal immigrants and other folks getting access to it that are not paying into the system through taxes. host: what is the ideal system in your mind? you are talking about a private market system but it is still too expensive, so how do you get -- if you get government out of it, how do you make this

affordable for you? caller: it is a very unfortunate scenario that i don't know that there is a perfect answer to it because when you take -- if you put every person in the united states into one health care system, what are people that are healthy, people that have less money, people that do not visit the doctor as much and do not have prescription costs built into their monthly budgets -- what are they going to do? they are going to get out of the system because they make the same decision i am currently making, which is it is more expensive for me to pay health care premium costs that it is to just exist outside the system. but if you remove someone like myself that does not visit doctors as much, does not use prescription drugs as much, does

not take access to emergency care physicians or regular specialist doctor visits, because when you remove someone like me from the system and you take out healthy individuals that only drives up the cost of the system per person because every person now is collectively less healthy and i don't know that i have a particular answer for it at the moment but it is something i believe americans need to educate themselves specifically about and understand the difficulties of trying to implement and adapt the american health care system from what it strictly was before the affordable care act as a totally private insurance system to this more open kind of public option availability.

host: thanks for the call from west point, georgia. kathleen is waiting in the windy city, democrat. good morning. caller: keep your hands on the coffee cup so i can have time like the guy from georgia. anyway, there is not a government shutdown. please give me a second to tell you why. a shutdown means lights off. but you got people going to work and not being paid. another thing is the only reason why -- hello? host: i am listening. caller: the only reason why donald trump and the republicans would not come to the table with the democrats, and this is for the lady from pennsylvania, is obamacare. if it had been any other insurance they wanted to come to agreements with, it would not be

a shutdown. trump has been trying to get rid of obama care since he came down the escalator. do not be duped. it is because obama care. if the democrats mess around and negotiate with these republicans, which they have come and they have been lied to -- obamacare is not coming back up again. the thing that would be so nice is the first four years trump was there he had a big, beautiful insurance plan. he is back again. where is back again. where's the insurance plan? you do not get rid of something millions need if you don't have nothing to replace it. nothing to replace it and you want to get rid of it? another reason why the government -- it is not a shutdown. it is people not getting paid because they are still working. it is the epstein files. but later with that. the main thing is please don't be fooled about this.

it will be sad when you lose your health coverage because one man is so envious of another man . he does not want president obama to go down in history and that is a shame. host: that is kathleen in chicago. on the state of negotiations for the shutdown, more from the sunday shows yesterday. it was senator ruben gallego of arizona. this is what he had to say. >> if you go to the grocery store, food is still high. energy is high. now we are going to add health insurance costs on top of that. we are asking the president to take a leadership position. let's work on real compromise. with some type of reform to the aca. but we need to assure americans who do not see insurance premiums double overnight. that is what is going to happen unless republicans work with us to stop it. >> how long are you prepared to

stick out this fight? past thanksgiving? >> i am not looking at a timetable. >> do you rule the timetable out? >> i rule any timetable out. what i'm focused on is trying to keep costs low. everything is hurting. they talk about the price of rent. it is not going down. in most areas, it is going up. we are going to go back and add again insurance premiums doubling for 24 million americans. that is a decision the republicans are going to make and then they have to own for the next year. i am not sure a lot of republicans understand what they are about to do. host: senator ruben gallego yesterday on the cost of goods right now. the business section of the new york times took a look at the impact of tariffs imposed under the second trump administration.

they note since the trump administration started imposing steep tariffs on goods and the rest of the world to the treasury department has been taking in about $30 billion a month from custom dues on paper. american companies paid those bills when their products enter the country. figuring out who ultimately absorbs the cost is more complicated. inflation data had shown limited effects through the summer. corporate earnings calls in recent weeks suggest that is changing and new data was released friday. companies have passed along about 37% of new tariffs on to consumers, forcing 9% onto suppliers and companies have zorba 51% through august according to a report from goldman sachs. that is a big hit to shoppers, enough to reverse inflation, but it is milder than it would have been if companies were charge consumers as much as they had at the same point of the last burst of tariffs during president trump's first term.

mostly it is because tariffs are higher and more widespread than in 2018, making them difficult for consumers to digest at once. corporate profit margins are healthier. consumers are more exhausted by pricing over the past several years and companies suspect the white house may back down from tariffs eventually. if you want to read the full story, it is in the new york times. about 20 minutes left here in the first hour of the washington journal. this is stephen out of lexington, kentucky. good morning. caller: good morning to everybody, as happy as it can be on a monday. it is a terrible thing that this shutdown is occurring and affecting everybody. any kind of -- you are in is getting affected negatively.

it is still affected by the government shutdown. we are not getting any pictures from nasa during the shutdown for an interstellar object that is flying through our solar system. right now, it is behind the sun and we could easily get pictures of this but with a shutdown nasa does not want to release photos and this is a strange object because it is not like an asteroid we have seen in the past. it has anomalies. on october 29, we are going to be able to see it move past the sun. if that object moves in any way radically, we know we are not alone. right now quite the government is not allowing us to see this. the international asteroid warning society, a nasa organization, they quietly initiated a trigger, the asteroid warning society, to

start looking at the subject. host: you are worried the shutdown will keep us from discovering aliens? caller: from discovering anything in our solar system. what if the asteroid's nonhuman intelligence and coming our way and we have no idea and we cannot prepare? it is not a funny issue. it is real. there is a lot out there telling us the truth, that we are not alone in this universe. the fact that the government shutdown right now is too coincidental. i am telling you. nasa needs to release these photos because -- host: you think the shutdown is a conspiracy? caller: i think it is really happening. host: designed to be shut down so we do not get to see this object? caller: it is designed to stop the u.s. or people in the u.s. to be able to react to anything, not just the space objects, but to threats coming internally.

it is a power grab, really. what if something does come toward us and the president just decides to enact all the power just because we have a threat from the outside? it is too easy for him to be able to pull this lever of total power and we are all in the dark about it. it is the wildest situation. we are all sitting here like ducks at the will of this government that does not care about the regular joe, the regular stephen, the regular elizabeth out there. host: when do you think you last time was that we had a government that cared about the regular stephen out there? caller: i am a millennial, so i have been through everything. all the boomers and gen x -- you guys have whiplash back and there has not been a time. i loved the 90's growing up, but after that, it has been

terrible. between going to college and getting student loans, between the housing market, between the government -- it is the wildest 36 years of my life. host: what you do for a living? caller: my regular job is in manufacturing. host: how much do you have in college loans? caller: i have been paying them since 2012 and i think i have $23,000 that i/o, which is ridiculous. host: what did you get your degree in? caller: marketing and advertising. i'm think will for it. the life that we have now is way more complicated than our parents had. we are working harder and making less and we are supposed to do more with nothing. then all these baby boomers are collecting social security. my parents are traveling around europe.

so they are living it up. good for them, but baby boomers have ruined this economy for us. they gave us trump. i blame it all on you guys. this object, if it is nonhuman intelligence or something we do not know about and it does come toward us, it is all trump's fault. host: this is barbara in fargo, republican. caller: you are one of my favorites. why can't the individual states handle food stamps? can't they feed their own people? anyway, have a wonderful day. i enjoy your show. host: this is barbara in new york city, democrat. caller: thanks for taking my call.

where is congress? it appears to me that donald trump making all the decisions and in the past they would vote for or against any decision-making and donald can just go and say he is going to do this and shutdown the government? this is the third time shutting down the government. can congress stop this from happening? we should not have to punish the people. we are the taxpayers. they should work with us, not against us. what is going on in washington, d.c.? do we need congress? maybe be do not need them. we will have a king like donald. host: you should stick around for our 9:00 hour this morning because the topics that you bring up, philip joyce, public policy professor, wrote about those topics in his recent piece from government executive, how

the president expended his power without a legislative branch creating a vacuum for the executive branch to expand his powers. that is the thesis of his peace. we will go through it starting at 9:15 am so the topics you bring up, it is the last 35 minutes of the show. caller: thank you. host: that is barbara in new york city. jack, independent, good morning. caller: good morning. i have to give it to you, taking calls from small business owners that think they are superman and never need to go to a doctor and never need to go to an emergency room and then you got other people not concerned about 43 million people losing their supplemental food assistance and they are worried about aliens. host: what are you worried about? caller: i have a good job. i have money.

i have insurance. i care about people who do not. that is what i care about. so to go over the history of what is going on, the continuing resolution that was done by the democrats and the republicans just want to pass that. the republicans did not renew anything. they just want to pass that p that is fine. but this other program is running out, so why not renew that? patients have letters be mailed to them that their insurance is going from $363 a month to $1000 a month, so that is horrible. you are taking that from 20 million people and with the stamp benefits being taken from 43 million people -- trump saw fit to pay the military. i don't understand why he cannot release the allocated funds. it seems like the administration

has no problem hurting the poor, the sick, and people who want to get health insurance. that guy who didn't want to buy health insurance -- he does not put himself in other people's shoes who said benefits need to go out and have medical coverage . i'm glad to have the affordable care act. if they pay $400 a month, they are probably paying $3500 a year. that is so they can go to the doctor and they do not have to worry about getting a sports injury. people get injured. so even when you're are trying to keep yourself fit, you can still hurt yourself and sprain an ankle or break a bone or fall off your bicycle. then what you do? then you are paying out-of-pocket. i work in a trauma center in a low income area. these people use the emergency

room as their doctors and they are left with huge bills when accidents happen. host: what do you do in a trauma center? caller: i work in an emergency department. host: what do you do there? caller: they employ power medics. i basically triaged anyone who comes in and has any cardiac issues. i do ekg and draw labs and i whisk them up to the cardiac lab if they are having a heart attack or anything like this. host: can i ask you about your job? when you do that, when somebody comes in in an emergency situation, what do try to find out about that person? do you try to find out anything about the person? there have been discussions about illegal immigrants using emergency rooms for health care and concern that that is a form of health insurance, that people

who are not citizens of this country make use of and that they are getting around the system that way. what are your thoughts on that debate? caller: i know when they come in they give their information at the triage where they come in the emergency room, unless they are brought in by ambulance. in my experience, we do not treat anybody differently. i know that their information is taken prior to me seeing them, so i try to treat and others i work with try to treat the patients like they are our family members and i treat everyone like i treat my mother. you come through, i do not care if you are black, white, brown, muslim, christian -- none of that matters. everybody gets sick and people that think differently -- that is not based in reality. you are going to get sick.

you are going to get her one day. as far as insurance or whether they are illegal or not -- i never thought about it. i am bilingual. i speak spanish. some of our patients speak spanish. that comes in handy. host: you do not think about how a person is going to pay for this? caller: the er is going to treat you no matter what, whether you can pay or not. it is not like we are going to say you have to get out of here. i think it is a law. it is just moral to me if you are going to come in and you're hurt we are going to take care of you but there are stories of people who do not know how they are going to pay they are not aware of how much it is going to be. some doctors try to do the cheapest treatment. they could do a million-dollar cardiac workup on you, but they are not what to do that to somebody that appears to be out

on their luck and they try to get them through quickly and affordably. they are not going to -- host: so there is that money factor that comes in. caller: we treat everybody, but i know some doctors talk about other doctors who do not pay attention to that and will do an expensive workup on somebody when they are pretty sure that the person does not have insurance or -- i have heard people ask, do you have a prescription plan? because they will have certain medications are cheaper and one might be more financially feasible for the patient so we take that into consideration but i don't really hear a lot people ask if the patient has insurance. i think asking that question

would indicate to the patient that you're going to be treated one way if you have insurance and another way if you do not. i think that is why we do not do it. i do not do it because it does not matter to me. if someone asks me do i have insurance -- i want to feel a certain way. if i do not, are you going to treat me worse than someone that did? host: a few other folks i want to get to. ed has been waiting in pleasant valley, new york, republican. caller: i had an emergency two years ago and i had no insurance because i had lost my job. i went to the emergency room. they asked me about my insurance. i had insurance until i lost my job and they made me sit in a corner. the emt that brought me there told me via do not get service

right away i am going to lose my eye. i had a good friend who was a heart doctor. he was out there screaming at everybody to get me in and get services done. but i was set aside by personnel that said check your insurance. besides all that, the state of new york has more money to take care of everybody but us, the citizens of the state. i worked all my life. i am 71 years old. i laid out almost $15,000 for school tax in my local area. we were flying them in for four years to every airport in new york state. supposedly there are 250,000 immigrants in the state. kathy hochul is looking for $2.5 billion to house and take care

of our migrant citizens. what about us? what about the people in the state? i worked all my life and i'm trying to hang onto everything i worked for but it is almost impossible. you cannot even build a house without making it all electric. host: what line of work were you in? caller: i did mechanic work all my life. it is like -- and there was a fellow from pennsylvania that called. back in the 70's, i paid 18% for my little house. 18% interest. i worked two jobs seven days a week. my wife also. people just do not want to go out and do the work. i was living on peanuts to keep my house and raise a family. in the 1970's, it was tough

times, like it is now. i paid and -- 18% interest on my little house. there is a way to do it, but for some reason the american people have been shoved aside from coast-to-coast. four years of what went on and millions of people that they are trying to tell us we were not seeing what was going on? i see it in my little town. that is why my school taxes are so high. it is out of control. host: this is edna in illinois come a democrat. good morning. caller: i don't have a lot of sympathy for the people that voted for donald trump. they knew what he was when he came down that escalator. still, they voted for him. if they voted for kamala harris, three met -- 300,000 people laid off from their jobs would still have them.

they would have still had their jobs. thank you. host: do you think kamala harris should run again in 2028? caller: i think she should try may be in 2032. host: why do you want her to wait until 2032? caller: there is a lot hostility toward her now. she has to prove herself again. this guy -- i cannot even describe him. why is he being allowed to put that cheap gold in the white house looking like a cheap casino? host: that is edna in illinois. to that question and your description of it, here is today's front page of the wall street journal. how donald trump barreled through the red tape to get his ballroom. the crux of it i will give to you.

the story starts in july with an email from the white house to three members of the 12 person planning board appointed by former president joe biden. i'm writing to inform you your position as commissioner on the national capital planning commission is terminated affected -- effective immediately. in their placement president trump installed his own panel of loyalists, including senior white house officials, giving republicans control over a little-known body that has outsized influence on the white house complex. the national planning commission has raised no public objections to his plans to remodel the most famous residents in the world. that is the front page story in the wall street journal today. rachel, florida, republican. you are next. about a minute and a half left here. caller: i don't understand people who call in and say through the money at the shutdown and get it over.

we are $37 trillion in debt, which does not mean we got that money in the bank. that means we are -$37 trillion. we do not have any money. basically we have no money. i do not understand why people say let's just keep throwing this money so we can get the shutdown over. you know what? you know who has done this to us? congress. they put us $37 trillion in debt. you know who else is the cause of this? us, the people who voted these people in. we keep voting the same people in. it is not our grandchildren we are selling out. it is us. we are going to be the ones to have to have a barrel full of money to pay for a carton of milk if we keep this up. we have to stop and think. we have no money.

host: let me try to get in gordon from maryland, last caller in this first segment. caller: good morning. all this stuff going on -- i see a lot of people in the senate and house say they are christians. i see them not really telling the truth. i asked them to read these three chapters in the bible. the 15th chapter of palms. proverbs the sixth chapter, 16 verse. and revelations, the 21st chapter. if they think looking to go to heaven and telling lies, i'm sorry, they are on the wrong track. you can't align -- be lying to the people and call yourself a christian. host: gordon of maryland in our

last caller in the first segment of "washington journal." stirk around. later this morning we'll talk to university of maryland public policy director philip joyce, about how the government shutdown has been used to extend executive branch power over budgetary matters. after the break, government executive staff reporter sean michael newhouse. we'll look at the disparate impacts of the shutdown based on americans' zip codes and political affiliations. stick around for that conversation after the break. ♪ >> watch america's book club. c-span's bold new original series. this sunday, with our guest pulitzer prize winner, stacey schiff, author of biog graphs, including ben franklin, samuel

adams, and lee imroa patry. she joins our host, david rubenstein. >> write ago second book. you must admire him. you do admire him? >> i feel he's always admirable in so many ways. just the essential d.n.a. of america. his voice is the voice of america, literally. >> watch america's book club with stacey schiff. sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. eastern and pacific. only on c-span. >> the book is called, "breakneck" china's quest to engineer the future. author dan hwang was born in china in 1992. his parents moved to canada when he was 7. in 2014, he graduated from the university of rochester in new york. then in 2018, dan went to live

in china until he returned to the u.s. in 2023. he then went to the offices of the yale law school and wrote about his comparison of china and the united states. he writes in his intro, quote a. strain of materialism, often crass, runs through both countries. sometimes producing variations of successful entrepreneurs, sometimes creating displays of extraordinary tastelessness, but overall contributing to a spirit of vigorous competition. >> author dan hwang of his book "breakneck" on his en-- this episode of book notes plus with host brian lamb. available wherever you get your podcasts and the c-span now app. >> "washington journal" continues. host: focus now on who is and isn't being impacted by the government shutdown. sean michael newhouse is a staff reporter for government executive. he's boam koamed through several recent reports on that topic.

one of the key findings is that political party affiliation plays a big role in weather people -- whether people perceive they have been impacted by the shutdown or not. explain that. guest: so start with the organization who conducted the survey. the partnership for public service a nonpartisan, nonprofit government group. as part of their duties they conduct surveys regularly on how the public sees government. i should note this was in the second week of the shutdown. we are now in the fourth. what they found, they asked the respondents if the shutdown impacted people in your community. 48% total of respondents said that their community was impacted by the shutdown. big partisan difference. we have 69% of democrats agree with that statement compared with 27% of republicans. and then 38% of independents in the middle. host: we could put those numbers on the screen for our visual learners out there. you mentioned that's the second week of the shutdown.

is government executive following up on that? when we have these surveys it's -- you get a better understanding when you see the move over time s there a follow-up survey coming on this? guest: that is a very good question i will probably have to ask the organization after this interview ends. when they first released the survey i saw this big partisan split and hi a couple thoughts why that might be. i asked them why do you think this happened? the research manager responded to me, basically that personal politics impact how you perceive government. he pointed me to another recent report that the organization did and i cover. every year they look at trust in government. 2024 compared to 2025, 2024 last year, biden, 10% of republicans said they trusted the government. 2025 first year of trump that number increased to 42%. there's been a similar decrease with democrats. this is not exclusive one party phenomenon. again, how ones politics perceives how you impact the government. host: one zip code.

wallet hub with another report on that topic. what did wallet hub find? guest: i thought their methodology was clever. to determine which states were most impactded by the shutdown, they looked at the percentage of workers in that state who were federal workers. they looked at federal contract dollars spent per capita in the statement which made sense to me. they looked at other factors i didn't initially consider i thought was clever. they looked at the percentage of individuals in the state who rely on snap, food stamps. we know that that benefit is set to expire at the end of the month. they looked at real estate as a percentage of the state's gross economy. the shutdown affects any housing agency they might get their operations might be completely shut down. or the very least probably just that their work is slow. they looked at the number of national parks in the state because whether a park is closed, various park by park at the very least most of their operations have been affected. host: you mentioned -- mentioned

the snap news the administration announcing that there wasn't going to be additional money for that when those benefits run out. we'll see if that holds. i think the number's something like 47 million americans who make use of snap. here's from wallet hub the percentage of families in each state that receive snap benefits. the states with the highest percentage of families receiving snap benefits, new mexico, the district of columbia, louisiana, west, oregon. the states with the lowest percentage of families receiving snap benefits, kansas, north dakota, new hampshire, utah, and wyoming. new mexico comes up as one of those states that if you live there, you are feeling this government shutdown more. what are some of the other states? guest: yes. unsurprisingly d.c. was the city that wallet hub determined was the most impacted because d.c. has the highest percentage of workers who work for the government.

also the highest amount of federal contract dollars per capita. you mentioned new mexico, they determined that was the third most affected. it is the state with the highest percentage of its residents who are snap participants. it has one of the highest numbers, federal contract dollars per capita in new mexico. number two, you might think maryland or virginia would be number two, number three. hawaii was number two. that's because they have a relatively high percentage of workers in hawaii for the federal government. fourth of its economy relies on real estate and they have a lot of national parks. host: what's your read why new hampshire, nebraska, indiana, iowa, and minnesota are the states with the lowest level of impact, at least according to this set of statistics. guest: i wouldn't say i have any particular read. i did notice looking at the states that were least impacted they did tend to be in the midwest. it's just because of the factors that wallet hub determined to -- used to determine which states had the most impact. they had lower scores. host: federal contract dollars

per capita is another one of those factors that wallet hub used here. the states with the most per capita, the district of columbia, unsurprisingly number one. virginia, maryland, new mexico, and connecticut. the states with the lowest federal contract dollars per cap tax nebraska, arkansas, oregon, minnesota, there it is, and delaware. asking you, our viewers this morning, are you being impacted by the government shutdown. give us a call. sean newhouse joins us for this conversation. he's been following some of these different reports on it. 's how you can join the conversation. republicans, it's 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. and independents, 202-748-8002. as people are calling in on that switch gears for me. another topic you have been following, agencies, inspectors again jen, for folks who haven't

been tracking it. what's been happening to the executive branch core of inspectors general in the second trump administration? guest: absolutely. start with what inspectors general are. several agencies have inspect jurors general. they lead offices of staff ranging from thousands thousands of employees to hundreds. their job is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the agencies. they issue reports that look at the effectiveness of agency programs. individuals can submit whistleblower complaints. they may investigate those. i covered congress before this current jorks it was very rare you would watch a congressional markup where a member of congress either side would not bring up information referenced by an inspector general. they were really herled as the -- heralded as the pinnacle of nonpart disn schaap. what's been happening. the first friday of trump's second term he fired 17 agency inspectors general. the month after in february he removed the i specter general for the u.s. agency for

international development. that's an signature that i si that's been elimb named -- that's an agency that has been eliminated. they would make it harder to provide oversight of foreign aid of that memo was issued. they were removed. just two weeks ago the inspector general for the export-import bank was fired by the president. host: what is the export-import bank? guest: i'm glad you asked that question. i knew the name but didn't know what they did until i was reporting this. they help companies with exporting. they provide financing. host: why is chuck grassley, the photo that went along with the latest story as the ex-im bank inspector general firing? guest: senator chuck grassley, a long time republican iowa senator, has been a long time defender of i specters general. he was the person -- inspectors general. he was the person who for the most part announced the inspector general for the

ex-embank was fired n his post he said that the president, like the firings earlier this year, did not note at the phi -- notify congress as required. host: is he saying what the president did was illegal? guest: that's a question i covered a confirmation hearing last week and the senator asked nominees that question. start with what the requirement is. in 2008 congress required the president -- the president can remove the inspector general. be clear about that. but in 2008 congress required that the president had to give congress 30-day notice before removing an inspector general. then in 2002, they expanded that requirement to say the president had to provide the substantive ration aal for their move. it wasn't enough to say i'm firing this guy in a month. i have to explain why. that did not happen -- host: why would congress want to know that? what does that do for congress? i imagine it's congress protecting the legislative branch powers. how?

guest: i think it gets to controversy. agency inspect jurors -- inspectors general are political appointees. but not political appointees in a classical sense. they are legally required. but traditionally expected to have some independence from the administration. they perform oversight on the administration. the expectation is if something critical or bad would come out about the administration they would report that information fairly and accurately. if it gets to when an inspector removed and a lot of questions are why were they removed? what might the administration try to cover up. host: do the inspectors general report to? guest: i guess congress, the president, and the american people. host: not the head of the agency which they are the inspector general. guest: that goetz into thorny legal -- gets into thorny legal issues. they are expected to have some degree of separation. host: what has been president trump's reaction to criticism, fair way to describe from chuck grassley? guest: it goes beyond chuck

grassley. most congressional democrats, many government groups. every time i right on -- write on inspector generals i have to reach out for comment. i mentioned it used to be heralded as pinnicles of nonpartisanship. the trump administration this term called them partisan, corrupt, they lie to the public. certainly a rhetorical shift on the part of the trump administration. host: what do we the nominated inspectors general for the defense, labor, and small business administration. guest: that was the hearing last week that i covered. i think the most notable is the nominee for the labor department inspector general, that's former representative d'esposito. he was a republican, one term, loss his re-election race. just the fact that he is a former congressman is surprising. it is expected that inspect jurors -- inspectors general are not political figures. historically they have served across terms. if a democrat's next president,

if deesposito is confirmed and democrat is the next president, i have a hard time seeing him staying under that administration. also dehe poe seat disoo zito -- d'esposito was accused of an ethical lapse. he agedly -- allegedly hired his fiance's daughter and a woman he was having an affair. both his political history and that ethical scandal played a role in that hearing. host: a lot on the table there. inspect jurorsen -- inspectors general and the reports of the impact of the government shutdown. sean newhouse of the government executive, staff reporter. it's goff exec.com if you want to see his colleagues' work. or call like george out of the garden state of new jersey. george. caller: i'm here. my comment is on the impact of the government shutdown. it seems to me, it's political

move just to take care of the obamacare situation. possible increase. i'm a retired 81-year-old. and my wife is 79. we do live on a fixed income. but we pay for our own insurance. and it costs us over $12,000 a year out of pocket for a supplemental program and d for pharmaceuticals. i'm paying a lot of money with no supplement from the united states government. my son at one time was on obamacare and found it totally, totally inadequate. to take care of him. fortunately he's a younger person and didn't have any health issues. my point here is why are they

holding us hostage to $1.5 trillion, whatever the figure may be, to support a program provided by people who give donations to politicians? i feel that's what it's all about. if they would only remove the boundaries from states and make the health care companies compete with each other for my dollar, we would be better off. that's my point. now we shut down the government because one side wants to keep their little boondoggle going because they are supported by health care companies. host: george, are you feeling the government shutdown's impacts where you are, bogata, new jersey? caller: yes. i see it. i see my neighbors. i have two neighbors who are air traffic controllers. they are not going to be paid. they did tell me they are going to go to work. but they say their colleagues

are up in the air whether they should report in. whether they should call sick. and air traffic control is a critical thing for this country. we live near an airport. i have aircraft flying over my home all the time. that's the backbone of industry. that's keeping people working. all those airline employees that will be affected by the reduced schedules. the airport employees. because they'll be furloughed. this is all to keep this obamacare boondoggle going. host: thanks for the call. from new jersey, george. i want to let sean jump in. have you covered much on air traffic controllers and where -- what happens the next couple weeks if this goes another couple weeks, on that front with the shutdown? guest: i haven't but my colleagues have. there was a detail in a story about how federal employees are

government executive we cover federal employees, this is our bread and butter. it's how federal employees are responding to this financially not getting paid. my colleague interviewed an air traffic controller. he said some of his colleagues are working six days a week. they are not getting paid for this work at the moment because of the shutdown. on their day off they are ubering. driving for uber. that's not a situation you want people to be in. i know in the 2019 shutdown, it's been widely -- i believe it was 2019, when air traffic controllers started not showing up for work in greater numbers that prompted congress to come to a resolution. air traffic controllers have definitely historically been one group of federal employees who are looked at as far as the consequences of the shutdown. host: 2018 to 2019, lasted 35 days. we are at day 276 this shutdown -- 27 of this shutdown. second longest. taking phone calls with sean two

knewhouse of government executive. this is ted until new hampshire, democrat, good morning to the granite state. caller: good morning. i got a question. i live in new hampshire. i have blue cross, blue shield. and massachusetts has blue cross blue shield. the difference in coverage is based on zip code. why can't it be universal? why don't i get the same coverage as massachusetts? and why can't it be nationally? and i notice when they do the ads on the bottom, it's all based on your zip code. why do they do it in such a blurry, small print on the bottom. host: ted, how do you feel, we had a caller earlier today very concerned about identity deof a universal health care system, a single payor system of the government running health care. you talk about why can't it be a

universal price. how concerned are you about that? is that something you would support? we lost ted. he hung up. something you cover much at all or no? guest: no. do i relate personally to the small print at the bottom of health care forms. like the previous caller said i thinks his assessment best. the expiring subsidies of the a.c.a. are the main sut shutdown the democrats haven't provided the votes to pass the g.o.p.-backed resolution. wallet hub analysis didn't look at health care coverage. if these subsidies for affordable care act do expire, that would be another factor as far as determining which states are most affected by the shutdown or consequences. host: taking your phone calls for another couple minutes with sean newhouse at government executive to hear from you about the impact of the got government shutdown or -- of the government shutdown. or if you have questions.

he has been covering it extensively during the second trump administration. 202-748-8000 for democrats. republicans, 202-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. as people keep calling in what are you working on this week at gov exec? guest: i think with the shutdown it's day by day. whatever the president announces warrants coverage. more of trump's inspector general -- inspectors general nominees are getting through the confirmation process. i'll look at those also. last week there was a deregulatory memo, don't want to bring up completely new topic to your audience. trump came into office with a pretty ambitious goal as far as deregulation. last week his administration put out a memo that looks at how that is going to work in practice. anyone who is familiar with the regulatory process knows whether you are making regulation, deregulation it prompts a lawsuit.

very complicated subject. i personally find it interesting. it's very important as regulations often are how laws actually take effect, how it impacts people. host: with regulation, whenever this would come up in the past, this act that has been around for a long time, i think it's called the raines act, regulations that have an economic impact, over $100 million. there was a law proposed that congress would have to vote on those individual regulations. what's the status that have? has that come back up in the second trump administration? guest: i was about to say i don't know what you're talking about. as you're talking this -- i don't think i have -- you think if that was introduced i would get a press release about it. i have to look into that. if that has been introduced. with a republican congress, i don't know probably wouldn't get past the filibuster in the senate. you think that might be a bill that congressional republicans would be spotlighting.

host: certainly one we have talked about in years past here on the "washington journal." might be time for another segment on it. lynn wood out of beltsville, maryland, independent. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a comment in regards to inspector generals, for the department of justice. is there one in place at this point in time? as well as i have been reaching out to the united states attorney general for washington, d.c., pirro, as well as i would think she would pipe my information over to the department of justice. because there's an employee with the department of justice for whom fraudulently used government funds, an absurd amount of occasions, which he i propose to terminate. she's an attorney with the united states attorneys office in d.c.

in that particular regard, unfortunately i was terminated because i proposed her termination. i was retaliated against as a whistle blower. reaching out and trying to navigate the system is how difficult it is to seek justice. and disparate impacts in this particular season. host: that's linwood in beltsville, maryland. guest: i didn't immediately review this. if memory is correct, i forget his first name, horowitz as the inspector general at the justice department. he is no longer there. the deputy then became the acting inspector general. trump then put a different person in the acting inspector general position. that's been a separate controversy. however n. this case -- i'm relying on a bloomberg article here to cite my sources. i don't believe there is anything particularly controversial about the current acting inspector general at the

justice department. host: michael horowitz. guest: i was going to say anthony. that's his name. host: that process that the viewer was talking about in terms of whistleblowers and when and why they would go to an inspector general. versus other routes. how much can you tell us about the process of inspectors general and their interaction with individual federal employees? guest: i can't speak too much about the process, i am still glad you asked that question. as i mentioned inspectors general traditionally and also by law are supposed to have some degree of indpnts from the agencies they work at -- agencies that they audit. a whistleblower might be more inclined to go to inspector general because of that independence. and the good government groups have warned that with these firings of inspectors general, they say -- they argue will have a chilling effect on whistleblowers being willing to come forward.

host: try to get in one more call. out of texas. it's jim, line for democrats. jim, good morning. you are on with sean newhouse. caller: yes. i'd like to speak about how all this is effect of everything we are discussing here today is ineffective. donald trump has already taken over the federal government. and everything is mute. sir? host: i'm listening to you, jim. caller: and i think what the american public needs to prepare themselves for is a government controlled by donald trump and donald trump alone. host: that's jim's thoughts out of texas. another call from virginia. eddie, independent, go ahead. caller: good morning. i just have a question for your guest. as it relates to inspector generals, how do we square $130 billion being given anonymously for our military.

and $40 billion being given to argentina during a government shutdown? how do we square that as a government and the people? thank you. host: sean. guest: sure. i don't -- i think the donor for the military has been revealed. i believe it's mellon. that was anonymous for a time that. is a matter where i could foresee an inspector general would look into that to make sure that because they weren't providing those millions of dollars they weren't receiving any favor from the government. this is what the good government groups would say is that when you have -- when the president has an an adversarial relationship with the inspectors general, that might make the people who work in these oversight offices less inclined to pursue those potentially high-profile cases. i'm not saying there is anything untoward what happened. i could see that being something an inspector general might look

into. host: it comes -- when it comes to fawnding issue like that, could congress always hold hearings and investigations? they control the pursestrings. is it something congress can look into. it's not the first job of the inspector general. isn't the congress that's part of their job? guest: great point. there is probably a joke here to be paid about congressional experts say congress doesn't hold hearings anymore. that might be do nearby of a joke for -- niche on c-span. that being said, having done this for a couple years, many members of congress describe the inspectors general as their eyes and ears of the agency. members of congress have a lot of responsibilities. not just in their legislative role, but also as politicians. whereas inspectors general and the teams they lead are actually in these agencies have a lot of influence authority to be able to investigate these matters and then congress is able to use

that information. host: for more on inspectors general, sean newhouse covers the issue for government executive. it's gov exec.com. to see his work. we appreciate your time. guest: thank you so much. host: later this morning on the "washington journal," we'll talk to university of maryland public policy professor, philip joyce, about how the government shutdown has expanded executive branch power over budgetary matters. after the break, it's open forum. any public policy issue, political issue you want to talk about. phone lines are yours. the numbers are on your screefnlt start calling in now and we'll get to those calls right after the break. ♪ >> the book is called, "breakneck" china's quest to

engineer the future. author dan hwang was born in china in 1992. his parents moved to canada when he was seven. in 2014, he graduated from the university of rochester in new york. then in 2018 dan went to live in china until he returned to the u.s. in 2023. he then went to the offices of the yale law school and wrote about his comparison of china and the united states. he writes in his intro, quote, a string of materialism often crass, runs through both countries. sometimes producing variations of successful entrepreneurs. sometimes creating displays of extraordinary tastelessness. and overall contributing to a spirit of vigorous competition. >> author dan hwang with his book, "breakneck, china's quest to engineer the future." with our host brian lamb. available wherever you get your podcasts and on the c-span now app.

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shop now or any time at c-span shop.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: time now for our open forum. any public policy issue, political issue you want to talk about now's the time to call in. republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. and on this day 27 of the government shutdown, also a special line for federal employees, 202-748-8003 is the number that we setaside for federal employees. happy to talk to you on this 27th day of the government shutdown. here's what's going on today on capitol hill. despite the shutdown, at 10 a.m. eastern, after this program ends, we are going to go to a press conference by speaker mike johnson. he will be joined by small business administration head kelly lawf letter for that

discussion -- leffler. for that discussion. also on c-span.org and free c-span now video app. later today, two former justice department officials discuss whether the d.o.j. has become too politicized in recent years. that conversation happening at 4 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.og and the free c-span you go n.o.w. app. maryland senator chris van hollen will talk about future of american diplomacy and the humanitarian situation in gaza, 6:30 p.m. eastern time. here on c-span. c-span.org, and c-span now. plenty going on. there's been plenty happening already today. president trump is overseas. he landed this morning in tokyo. he's meeting with japan's emperor today. he's set to meet tomorrow with japan's new prime minister. and then all eyes later this week will be on his upcoming

meeting with president xi of china. expected to take place in south korea at the asia pacific economic cooperation summit that's taking place. news yesterday on that front from the treasury secretary on the sunday shows noting that a trade deal with china is within reach. the stage has been set for the trump-xi meeting. expectations of a trade deal that could avert an additional $100 -- 100% tariff president trump reported for china. "the washington post" reports it's highly anticipated between the world's two largest economies. that's going on today. we are taking your phone calls in open forum. samuel out of california. republican line. samuel, good morning. what's on your mind? caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. yeah, i was watching the mayor's race in new york city.

i can't believe how they put mamdani in there. he's going to catch the rich. everything will be free. i don't know where he's going to get the money because most of the people there that are multibillionaires, they are going down to florida. he's not going to find the money. i don't understand what's going on. i don't know why they don't put a good republican as a mayor in new york city to get it all straightened out. and get more police officers in there. he's talking about when people are committing crimes and everything. and people have mental problems and everything. he's going to send people over there to talk to him. them. i don't understand what they are trying to do there. you send most people over there. social workers over there. you have to send a policeman behind them in case those people go crazy. they are going to hurt somebody. you have to have a policeman

there. they are going to be policemen unavailable. anyway, the government shutdown. that's a terrible thing. i think that senator schumer, that he ought to just retire. it's not a.o.c.'s fault. he screwed up when he made the great big new deal and everything. that was -- i don't know what was going on. he signed that bill. he was done when did he that. host: got your point out of california. golden state. to the old dominion, lee. democrat. good morning. caller: thank you. first time caller. the democrats have failed the country and failed the american people. their lack -- host: you say that as a democrat. caller: yes. yes. their lack of messaging is destructive. they have not been speaking to and have not been connecting with us. except for a few, they are

nowhere to be found. the republicans will have a talking point and will be everywhere. stating it over and over whether it is true or not. and people come to believe it. every elected democrat should have been and should be out there on a full-court press like point guards touting and drilling information the american people need to know. congressman clyburn, he was everywhere and he is still everywhere trying to state the case. the lady that took his place in leadership, i don't even know what she looks like. but you will when it's time for re-election. we, the taxpayer, pay those people approximately $14,000 a month. they should have been and should be holding pressers, town halls every week, every month. in their respective localities. even standing on soapboxes at the mall. by the democrats being so efficient in messaging, misinformation and disinformation has been allowed

to fester. when that happens, it becomes embedded. that is hard to undo. if at all possible. the democrats lack -- their lack of messaging is destructive. and they have failed us. thank you. host: lee in virginia. you have some praise there for congressman jim clyburn saying he's everywhere. he also has a new book coming out in just a couple weeks here, two weeks from tomorrow. the book, "the first eight. personal history of the by nearing black congressman who shaped a nation. jim clyburn's new book if you want to read about it. marry ann out of niagara falls, independent. good morning. caller: yes, good morning. i'm almost 80 years old. i'm an independent. i'm partially disabled. i solely depend on my snap program for food. how isle new york state be

affected by this? they didn't mention anything about new york state. do you have an answer for that question? am i going to lose my snap benefits? host: marry ann i can't speak to that for you. how much do you get in snap benefits? how does it work for people who are not on that program? caller: who are not on it? i don't know. host: how does it work for you, for people who are trying to understand that program is what aim saying, to explain how it works for you -- i'm saying, to explain how it works for you. caller: how it works for me? i get a monthly, i get a card with money put on my card every month. i just got an increase, what i don't understand is, they just increased me $15, and now they want to take it away. why did the government increase the amount and now they are saying you are going to lose it? i don't understand that. host: do you mind saying what

the total amount is you get per month? caller: i get $247 a month. that barely gets me through the month. i'm a diabetic. i have to buy special food. i'm partially disabled. i have five different specialists that i see if i don't have my insurance i can't see them. what kind of position am i going to be in? host: that's maryanne out of niagara falls, new york. here's the story from "the new york times." with no end in sight to the nearly month-long federal government shutdown, funding for the nation's largest food assistance program known as snap will disappear at the start of november, according to the department of agriculture. on friday the trump administration said in a memo that it would not tap into contingency funds to keep the payments flowing to states. the time story noting roughly 42 million americans who rely on snap, the supplemental nutrition assistance program, may soon

have to find other ways to feed themselves and their families. john, out of virginia, republican. you are next. caller: yeah. hi, john. good morning. how are you? host: well. caller: hello? yeah. i just wanted to mention, i moved from omaha, nebraska, 10 years ago. i have been listening to your program on the radio here in washington, d.c. area. you do have a very fascinating program. one of my other former fellow employees, we do talk about this. i just had two things i'd like to touch on in i could. by the way, do you have a very fascinating program. as a social studies major. you and greta do a very good job as far as this. host: thanks, john. caller: early september i lost -- the line went dead. don't know what happened. but i would like to talk about two things. last time we spoke was back in early 2020 during springtime. you were asking me questions about colonial beach, virginia. which i'm still a residents off. we are back to normal here.

took us a while. about three years. all the beaches closed and restaurants. frankly the chinese restaurant across the park is out of business. i hope next year during spring you come down, i think you know where colonial beach is at. you asked me a bunch of questions. i was glad to ask you that what was going on here with the town. host: what was the other topic? caller: last year when i moved from omaha, nebraska, lived there for 25 years off and on three times. when i went to college in the early 70's there. the other things on the eighth july of last year from 9:30 to 10:00. you had former governor and senator bob kerrey on your program. you may remember that. what happened was that i was there when he was governor. and a lot of things about him you don't know. all these things took place before you were born. what happened there is that bob kerrey, i think when he ran for governor back in 1982, he only

had four restaurants. no political experience. i think two things the reason why he squeaked in. he only won by 1,200 votes. plus he had debbie winger, "terms of endearment" in nebraska. i was at college when that real life story took place. that's the reason why he got all this fantastic news. and attention from the news media. people adored him. when he went to government, as governor when i got back, i had an 8.6 unemployment rate. the economy pretty much collapsed. i don't think he had an idea what to do. he left. and a lot of things about him. did you know as a medal honor recipient, he's the only one who was a vietnam war protester, did you know that? i was there in nebraska when he was. i did not vote for him. during the two times he ran for senator. i felt he was all talk and no action.

and that's the reason why i decided to call you. i waited quite a long time, for about a year, to explain some things about you as well. host: john, i appreciate you getting in today if you want to learn more, other other viewers want to learn more about bob kerrey, he has 572 videos in the c-span video archive. his first appearance on c-span networks in 1984. and it was july 8 of last year that he joined this program. i think that's the one you are referring to. viewers can watch that interview as well. john, appreciate the call from virginia. this is joe, in north carolina, democrat, good morning. caller: yes. i'm a retired primary care doc, prisons, mental institutions, and rural health. i have never treated an illegal

immigrant with medicaid. in 41 years. i wish the lying would stop about this whole thing. it is absolutely a lie. the obamacare's hated because obama had something to do with it. and like donald trump, he wants to destroy everything that obama did. and especially the idea that health insurance is giving colored people something free. host: why do you use that term? caller: because that's the way most southerners see obamacare. it's a free thing from a colored man to other colored people. this is the way they see obamacare. this is why trump needs to

destroy it. plus he's jealous as hell. he didn't get a nobel prize. he wants that. he wants to buy it if he can get it. and the last thing being that this whole idea of not talking about epstein. epstein, all of the dirt they've got by hooking guys up with prostitutes with little boys and girls. they will go to all expense to make sure we never hear the truth of it. and i can bet today there's -- they're still erasing pages and sentences and pictures because when this thing ends, the stuff is really going to hit the fan, isn't it? host: that's joe. this is marie in ohio, independent.

good morning. caller: good morning. just a quick comment. i just found out that building the big ballroom isn't going to really happen because they are going to have to arrest all the i.c.e. police are going to arrest the workers there because most of them are immigrants. i had a roof put on my house a few years ago. i thought i was dealing with a local company. and then all of a sudden it was all mexican workers that came. and then only one could speak english. that's my comment. thank you. host: articles today on the destruction of the east wing, the construction of a new ballroom. this is the "wall street journal," fronts page, how trump barreled through red tape to get his ballroom. the president realized his long time dream by remaking a

planning board and taking advantage of permitting oddities when it comes to the white house. this is the "washington post" story, the east wing's quiet power, silenced. the space was called the heart of the nation. and now it is gone. and this fro the op-ed pages of the "wall street journal," collin levy, a member of the journal's editorial board, who writes, best palaces loom over landscapes in riyadh, oman, and malaysia. the scale and grandeur of the building doesn't confer on those nations any gravitas or greatness. the buildings offer witness to the reason those countries are not as great as ours. they have been led by rulers who put their own opulence and comfort over the principles of the nation that they serve. of course the world changes and cities rise and fall, but a great sovereign nation guards certain spaces as monuments to the country's history and singularity. saying history is important. monuments matter. and the home of the u.s. president isn't just a building

to be optimized for function. it is a symbol of power. a legacy, a national identity. respect for the nation. and all that has built still matters. these aren't trifles or over joe re-actions, they are the foundations the republic was built on that is worth defending. saying the white house isn't private property. the demolition of the east wing was unprecedented. back to your phone calls. carolyn out of missouri, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a question. i saw the east wing being demolished. i was horrified. i also have this question. mr. trump brought the -- bought the old post office in d.c. and was making a lot of money in that building. he was also being watched quite

closely. i'm wondering does he have the east wing torn down so that he can do that there without giving any explanation who is coming and going and who is paying him? and he can be secretive, more secretive than he was in the old office building. hotel that he made. thank you. host: the old post office in washington, d.c., the trump organization did own it. it was sold in may of 2022 for about $375 million. now waldorf astoria hotel here in d.c. a few minutes left here. about 20 minutes left here in open forum. here's the phone numbers for you to call in. democrats, 202-748-8000. represents, 202-748-8001 -- represents, 202-748-8001 --

represents, 202-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. we'll head to harvey, louisiana, james, independent, good morning. caller: thanks for letting me get in here. the latey who called here year didn't appear to be a democrat, she said she was. i have a message for her. it is not the democrat leadership responsibility to message us. it's their job to do their job. if we just listen to what the republicans are saying, we would get their message. their leader -- it appears in our two-party system that we have one party that trice to follow the constitution. the other party doesn't seem to know what's in the constitution. their leader is talking about being paid $230 million when in the constitution it says what he can receive. that's his salary, period.

host: how do you think chuck schumer and hakeem jeffries have done as messengers for the democratic party during the shutdown? caller: i think they are doing wonderful. because the last couple years most people have been interpreting these people of being fekly, ineffective, like the lady just said a little while ago, they are doing nothing. what they are doing is following the rules. and now that they are actually standing in the doorway and saying, no more, people are blaming them for something that they are supposed to do. i know the so-called opposition party, but they are just opposing the things that are not supposed to be done. what's wrong with that? they are doing their job. i do have a couple of other ones. we need to listen to the republicans. they have had a message now for about 40 years. peace through strength. i don't know how they can keep saying that because -- next year

we'll celebrate our 250th anniversary. and the people we beat up on at the time and in 1776, they were the superpower of the world and they didn't have peace. we have more strength than the people we have gone to war with. and praise god, in most of the wars we have had the moral side won. but you can't have piece -- peace because you have the biggest guy on the street. you have to have the respect and the cooperation of those around you. and this president is pissing off our neighbors. start reading the constitution, understand the constitution, and respect people for doing their job. host: james, take the point there from louisiana, petsy in warren, michigan, republican. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you today? host: well. caller: i would like to bring up a few points for people that are

looking for more information on these boats that are being blown up for drug smuggling. if you want to see what they look like, there are programs on tv. i think it's the national geographic catch a smuggler. and they actually show what the boats look like. host: what do you think about those attacks on those boats? there's been a lot of controversy surrounding those. caller: yes. well, you can see the police and the coast guard and i'm not sheush what the other -- sure what the other agencies are, but they are going from -- they work with puerto rico and go from island to island. if you can see what the drug boats look like. and there are several other ones like contraband. they also show some of the boats

that are being washed up on u.s. shores in the state of florida. host: ok. that's betsy in michigan. will, out of maryland. democrat, good morning. caller: good morning. thank for taking my call. i have a few things i want to ask. if they are going up, blowing up the boats in the water, why not follow the boats to see who is receiving it in this country? that's one thing. hello? host: i'm listening. on that first point, the -- one of the explanations has been blowing up the boats is a form of deterrence to send a message to others, don't even try this. that that is the message that the united states is sending. that it's tried the law enforcement side of this. trying to follow them and dismantdle the networks. this is a deterrence -- dismantle the networks. this is a deterrence operation.

caller: ok. if you the city -- host: if you give cities funds to have more police what? caller: it will reduce crime. the other one is, how can a person stop seven laws and can't reopen the government? i think that would be easy than establishing seven laws. the last thing is -- host: what, will? keep talking. caller: ok. that's it. host: all right. that's will in maryland. tony, sea bring, florida, independent. good morning. caller: good morning. i contacted c-span a while ago and i'm doing a follow-up about the asking interpreters in their families are under deportation. there was a status change and

they are not being protected like they should be. these guys risked their lives to save our military personnel. now they are being dumped. it's not right. if the u.s. doesn't keep their promises, and protect people who assist us in military campaigns, who is going to believe that they are going to be protected in the future? it doesn't seem that difficult that either an exception or an exemption could come into play so that these guys can stay in the united states like they were told that they would be able to. i'm wondering if c-span could even do a story about this. i have written to every representative and federal government employee i could think of and no one's answering me. the military's very upset about this. it's all over the internet. it's on stars and stripes. the veterans don't like this at all. but it seems like they are up for deportation. like i said, if seems like the government could issue exceptions for these guys to

stay here and remain safe. sending them back to afghanistan is absolutely ridiculous. i'm hoping that your listeners will possibly follow up on this with their representatives and see if somebody can get this looked into. host: thanks for bringing up the topic. this is reuters' story on that topic. a couple months old at this point. there are a few stories like this. masked i.c.e. agents detain a former afghan interpreter who helped the u.s. military. that's from july. we'll look into some more recent stories for you. always appreciate the topic suggestions for this program. it's 365 day a year program. and plenty to talk about. let me go to kristi in kansas, other lynn park, kansas, line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. i just wonder how the complaint-comment, i don't know, i watch a lot of different news

stations to try to get different opinions some on the democratic side. and i'm not sure anyone say when is the supreme court going to step up and say enough is enough of trump? it seems like ever since they voted him presidential immunity, that's wul all he needed to do whatever the hell he wants to do. kidnapping people off the streets. if people are going to immigration court to get legal, then kidnapping them outside, it's the worst of the worst and all these other things. nothing he ever said comes the people that decide, i think the nine people in the supreme court, decide for 340 million people the rest of their live is absolutely ridiculous and we need to talk about changing that. i just don't understand why no

one is really saying what's really going on in this country, and now you've got this idiot who is a tyrant that has a child's ego, spoiled brat, who just wants to do everything for himself and make money for his family which was supposed to be illegal as well. i don't know. i just wanted to rant. have a wonderful day. host: that's christy in kansas. keep calling in. more phone calls in a couple minutes now. we want to go ahead to the other end of pennsylvania avenue where we're joined by "time" reporter nick popely at the white house grounds. president trump overseas in japan today. we know there's at least a framework deal in place for a trade deal with china. what more details can you fill us in on? what has the white house been saying to you today? ive guest: both sides have agreed to a framework of a deal

and we'll see if it holds true in a couple days when the two sides meet. both sides appear to likely extend the existing trade tariff truce which has been in place for the last couple months. but it remains to be seen just exactly how, you know, if both sides will be willing to hold up the so-called framework of a deal. we know that treasury secretary scott bessent said trump's threat of 100% tariff is likely off the table for now and that's a significant development we'll have to wait and see if it plays out. but certainly welcome news for the markets and for american farmers and for consumers here in the united states. host: the president is in japan today. this meeting with xi jinping of china is expected to take place thursday in south korea at the asia pacific economic cooperation summit. any more details about who would be in that meeting, where it will take place, sort of the

staging of this very big meeting between the leaders of the two largest economies in the world. guest: the most significant impact is it will be the first face to face meeting with president xi and president trump since 2018. the two sides will be talking about fentanyl and tiktok. president trump may also ask for president xi's support to pressure russia and president putin of russia. as we know, china has continued to purchase oil and gas from russia, so that may be a part of the discussions as well. it's possible taiwan comes up in those discussions as well. we know that the united states has remained firm in its stance it will continue to support and defend taiwan but president xi of china is likely to see how far the united states is willing to go on taiwan. and the other thing we'll be watching for is any discussion on those rare earth magnets, those rare earth minerals.

so bessent has said they've reached an agreement to curb, to stop those export controls of rare earth minerals but remains again to be seen if they'll follow through on that. host: what are you hearing about a possible meeting with the north korean leader kim jung un. there's been speculation that could happen while the president is there in south korea. guest: president trump said he's open to meeting with the leader of north korea but remains to be seen if that will actually happen. it doesn't appear likely that it will but given the fact the president will be in asia, in south korea, it is possible they could meet. the last time the president went to the demilitarized zone and something he talked about as one of his accomplishments he was able to do that but no real tangible progress came out of that other than the photo-op aspect. it remains to be seen if that meeting would take place but the president has indicated he would be open to it and you know,

depends. we'll see if north korea is open to it as well. host: and today and tomorrow in japan, tokyo, what's on the president's schedule? guest: the president will meet with the emperor of japan, i believe they're conservative and just started in japan so he'll be meeting with them and watched closely in japan and here in the united states. he'll be discussing trade with that country and so it remains to be seen how that goes. host: as the president is traveling this week overseas, what does it say about expectations for an end this week to a now 27-day-old government shutdown. is there any likelihood some negotiation would happen and the president would sign something to end this while he's traveling overseas? guest: it's possible but certainly dampens any expectation they could reach a truce or agreement on health care and ending this government shutdown while the president is abroad.

it's possible they could but given the fact the president is out of the country, the house still hasn't been in session. they've been out for more than a month. and the senate is in town and they could continue to discuss the government shutdown and the funding of the c.r. but it seems there is a pressing deadline coming up and that's november 1 when the snap funding is set to expire. snap is another word for the food stamp program. this funding will be cut off on november 1 and millions of americans will lose access to food stamps. that's a pressure point we're seeing and remains to be seen if that will accelerate these negotiations you mentioned. but with the president out of the country, it appears unlikely they're able to reach an agreement just given the fact that the president will likely need to sit down with the minority leader chuck schumer and hakeem jeffries of the house. host: the president oversees along with other members of his

cabinet, including the treasury secretary. so who this week would be the main white house emissary to capitol hill, somebody to watch to see if there is movement? guest: well, i think the senate majority leader john thune to watch closely. they generally hold press conferences with the senate and the house and speaker mike johnson will be one to watch. they'll discuss with reporters any progress that's been made. it will be important to see if their tone has shifted at all especially given that the snap benefits are set to expire and also military members might not get paid. furloughed workers are continuing to not get paid. so we'll have to see what their messaging is this week. certainly we've seen no indication they're willing to budge and we've seen no indication the democrats are willing to budge on their health care demands. host: we'll continue to watch "time" magazine, nik popli. and as the leaves are falling

behind you on the white house grounds, i want to ask whether you've been over to see the east wing demolition and how much access are reporters being given to that construction site and is that the sound of construction we hear behind you? guest: i believe it is the sound of construction behind me. i haven't been over to see it personally but i can hear it and we've seen pictures and images of the east wing being demolished. it remains a challenging -- sort of thorn on the side of the president a bit given all these images circulating but the president remains firm in his stance that presidents throughout history have been able to renovate the white house campus as they see fit. president nixon turned the white house swimming pool into the white house briefing room as it remains today. they remain firm they've followed the proper procedures and didn't need review of the demolition plan before it was demolished and there's a lawsuit against this hoping to stop the

construction but as you hear behind me, and i'm sure you'll see in some images as well, construction has continued and the lawsuit hasn't materialized to anything. host: nik popli covers it all at the white house. time.com is where you can go to read his work. we appreciate your time. back to your phone calls here, a few minutes left in open forum. any public policy or political issue you want to talk about, we'll head down to key west, florida, this is jim, independent. good morning. caller: good morning, how are you doing today? host: doing well, jim. how is key west today? caller: it's 84 degrees, sunny, it's help, man. host: sounds nice. caller: i have a couple of cultural points i want to make first. used to be dog was man's best friend but now man is dog's best friend and who is man's best friend now?

the cell phone. i just want to mention in this country about something that really bothers me is the teachers, the teachers union and the whole teaching thing. if you guys want to help, if the government wants to help, take my advice, my wife's advice, go off the interest rate on college loans to 2% and that would help quite a bit of people. secondly, when i was in elementary school, it was two teachers per grade. it was six grades in my elementary school with six cars in the lot. now you can't get into the parking lot. the teachers union cares about teachers and not students anymore. host: do you know any teachers? caller: are you kidding me? i've got them in my family. when they told the teachers -- host: how do they react when you bring this up? caller: oh, i don't bring it up.

i don't bring it up. i just sit there and watch. host: how is thanksgiving going to be for you, jim? caller: oh, awesome. we have the most loving family. my wife has six siblings, i've got seven siblings and we all love each other. when you have that many siblings, you know -- i don't know if you know, but there's always a couple black sheeps in the family and we love our black sheeps as well. we have no problems. our family is very loving. i would get -- i have vehement arguments with my daughters and nieces but the truth of the matter is our education publicly seems to be failing. when they say there's not 10 people that can read or do math according to their grade, to me the first year that happens, i would realize i have to get rid of some of these teachers because i mean, what's going on? then during biden, the mandates

that if you don't have the vaccine, then you're fired. well, to me a teacher should be very independent thinker and when he fired those teachers that refused to get the vaccine, to me he's firing probably the best teachers he's got. so i mean, those are my thoughts. i have a million thoughts. host: what line of work are you in in key west? caller: i am retired now but for five years i was a commercial fisherman and then when i started my family -- i have my business of 30 years, a little convenience store, liquor store in a town called quincy, massachusetts. now, quincy, massachusetts, prints asian ballots for their election. that blows my mind. how can a country that prints non-- we're a non-english

speaking country that prints english ballots for their elections? things happen in this country that don't make sense to me. i'm 70 years old. like i said, i have three kids and a lovely wife. and like i said, the world's going crazy. in key west here, you have to look at people with carriages and probably 60% of them have a little dog in their carriage and then they're picking up their poop. why don't you have a dog, jimmy? i will when i find one to pick up my poop. sorry to say that online. anyway, that's my thoughts. key west is a great place. we just had sanderson fest and we had my 81-year-old mother-in-law down here and she was mortified. host: what is that, jimmy? caller: fantasy fest. host: do i want to know? caller: that's a halloween

celebration where sometimes down here it's an adult disney world and there's not a lot of overpolicing, i guess is the way to put it. so you walk down the main street, duval, and i had to explain to my mother-in-law, this isn't really our lifestyle but it's crazy on fantasy fest. everybody comes down and loses their inhibitions. a crazy time. host: jimmy calling from key west, florida. talk to you down the road, jimmy. alvin out of denver. go ahead. caller: hi, john. you had two calls i want to focus on. one caller, john, the medical provider from philly who said he works, he has health care, but he thinks about the people who don't have access to health care. i hope he's listening, john.

i hope he's still listening because i'm with him. now. you had another caller, i can't recall his name, a guy from new jersey who talked about spending out-of-pocket $17,000 a year, and talked about how why can't we just go back to the free market and let insurance providers compete? well, you know what, john? we had that and that led to medicare. why? because providers refuse to care for older people. or they priced it so that people, older people couldn't afford it. why did we have government interventions with the affordable care act? insurance providers weren't caring for people who had pre-existing conditions. so the market wouldn't take care of itself.

government had to intervene. and one last thing i want to say, john. host: go ahead. i have 30 seconds. caller: the people who call and talk about all the problems in the u.s., it always gets down to the immigrants. it always gets down to the immigrants. that's what i have. host: that's alvin in denver. last caller in this open forum. stick around. 45 minutes left this morning in that time we'll be joined by university of maryland public policy professor, phillip joyce. we'll talk about how the government shutdown has impacted the executive branch and legislative branch powers. stick around for that conversation. we will be right back.

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♪ >> the book is called "breakneck, china's quest to engineer the future." author dan wang was born in china in 1992. his parents moved to canada when he was 7:00. in 2014 he graduated from the university of rochester in new york. in 2018, dan wang went to live in china until he returned to the u.s. in 2023. he then went to the offices of the yale law school and wrote about his comparison of china and the united states. he writes in his intro, quote, a strain of materialism often crass, runs through both countries, sometimes producing variations of successful entrepreneurs, sometimes creating displays of extraordinary tastelessness and overall contributing to a spirit of vigorous competition. >> author dan wang with

"breakneck" with the host brian lamb. it is available where you get your podcasts and on the c-span now app. announcer: "washington journal" continues. host: a conversation now on the shutdown and presidential powers. our guest is policy professor phillip joyce. professor joyce, in a recent column you wrote this in "government executive." when the government shutdown ends, donald trump will have succeeded in exceeding the largest expansion of the president's powers paw of the single largest shift of the constitutional balance of powers ever. explain. guest: i think the first thing to understand is that government shutdowns as bad as they are actually confer a great deal of power to the executive branch in making decisions about, for example, who is going to work and who is not going to work,

what programs and policies are going to continue and what programs and policies are not going to continue. but you go beyond that, he's really taken this opportunity to try to do many of the things he wanted to do anyway. so he's done something that no other president has ever done, which is to use this as an excuse to lay off employees, for example. and then the particular in my own view, the sort of particular thing that sort of gave me pause, i would say, is when he decided to pay the troops using an appropriation that was not for that purpose. i have no qualms about paying the troops. i think troops should be paid, everyone should be paid. but what he did was took fund that had been made available for one purpose and used them for a completely different purpose. once you have that kind of control over the budget, it's very hard to sort of see where that ends. host: why is that something that

gives a constitutional scholar pause? what's the concern there? guest: i should say i'm not a constitutional scholar and i don't play one on television but i will say clause 7 of article 1 and section 9 of the constitution says, and i'll read this, no money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequences of appropriations made by law. host: who makes those appropriations by law, the legislative branch. guest: the legislative branch and when it makes appropriations, it doesn't just give the president or even the department of defense a big lump sum and say spend it however you want. there are more than a thousand appropriation accounts in the federal budget and those appropriation accounts are first and foremost have limits in what can be spent for any particular item and what the trump administration did in this case is took an appropriation that was for research and development

in the department of defense and used that appropriation to make payments for military personnel and that's not the purpose for which that appropriation was made. so once the president can decide that he wants to take any pot of money and spend it for anything he wants to, that does sort of great damage to the power of the purse and the founders were very concerned that the congress pose the power of the purse at the risk of reading another quote, i'm going to do it anyway. madison in federal list 58 said the power of the purse may be regarded as one of the most complete weapon which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people. there's a reason the founders thought the power of the purse should rest in the congress and part of the power of the purse rests with congress means congress should get to decide, of course with the president's agreement, when the president

signs appropriation bills, what money can be spent for. but once that's happened, then the president should be bound to spend money in that way. host: is this just a function of the president's party controlling both the house and the senate and that if and when it happens that one party, the opposition party, gains control of one chamber, congress will reassert itself and there will be investigations and objections being raised to this? guest: i guess that's possible. but, you know, you have to ask yourself the question, whether the horse is out of the barn at that point. and what we don't know is we don't know what the courts are going to rule on this. i've been very careful to not just declare something is unconstitutional because what's constitutional is dependent on what ultimately the supreme court says is constitutional. so if there's a challenge to this at some point and the supreme court says it's ok, that's the point at which we are saying this could be a permanent

shift of power from the congress to the executive. host: bring me back to other times when there were supermajorities in the house and senate. lyndon johnson had supermajorities, did this sort of thing happen under lyndon johnson? guest: no, this sort of thing did not happen. as far as i'm aware, this thing has not happened under any other president. one of the things that makes shutdowns end is that people are not able to be paid, and in the case of the military, there always has been a legal provision made for the military to be paid. and so the difference here is that because the house hasn't been in session for more than a month in part, there has not been -- there was not any legal way to get -- in my opinion, there's not a legal way independent of the congress

acting to get the military paid which is why they turned to what i think is arguably an extra legal way to do this. host: has the trump administration broken any laws? guest: i think it is arguable the trump administration has broken a law called the anti-deficiency act. host: what is that? guest: it was a law created in 1870 and it was created in response to the fact that federal agencies had the habit of spending more money than they had and then coming to the congress and saying well, make us whole now. and what the anti-deficiency act did was it said not only are you not allowed to spend money you don't have but you're not allowed to spend money on things that money was not provided for. so when the trump administration took the research and development funding and used it to pay the troops, you know, people who have studied this more carefully and in a more detailed way than i have, argue

that that's a clear violation of the anti-deficiency act. i've read the talking points from the administration about why they think this is legal and i should be clear they do think this is legal. i also should be clear i'm not persuaded by their argument. host: that's the impoundment control act of 1974? guest: the impoundment act is almost the reverse of the deficiency act. what the impoundment act says a president cannot refuse to spend money appropriated by congress just because the president doesn't agree with the thing that's being funded. so a lot of the things -- and this, by the way, was passed in response to president richard nixon's actions in the late 1960's and early 1970's when president nixon would do exactly that. what he would do is sign appropriation bills that had been passed by the congress and then he would say, i don't really like this program so i'm not spending money on it. so the courts stepped in

initially to say there's nothing in the constitution that permits a president to unilaterally cancel funds or appropriations that have been passed by congress. so what the impoundment control act did was set up a procedure where the president could come in and request the congress cancel and appropriation that had been passed but importantly, the impoundment control act says that the congress has not acted in response to that within 45 days, then the money has to be freed for obligation. so a lot of the things the administration did sort of early in its term, which including things like shutting down the agency for international development or arguably violations not only of the law but also of the impoundment control act. host: if the horse is out of the barn on this power, what is the mechanism to get the horse back in the barn? is the supreme court the only way to do it?

guest: the supreme court is a way to do it. i think that the -- you know, the horse is out of the barn in part because the congress has not asserted itself and so, you know, waiting for the courts -- courts take a long time to act. and i think the congress has not really asserted itself, and i think you can sort of understand that democrats have not been pleased by this but democrats don't control either house of congress. i think the fact the republicans have not responded to this, in my view, is particularly shortsighted because this is not just a transfer of power from the congress to trump, this is a transfer of power from the congress to the executive. host: no matter what party. guest: some day there may be another democratic president and if i was a partisan republican in congress, do i want the next

democratic president to have this kind of authority? host: what's your view on the job of the budget director and how russ vought has handled that job? guest: i think he's a very, very bright man. and i think that he has expressed a willingness to kind of find every loophole he can find in order to try to get things done that he wants to get done. i think what i would say is that he does not feel very bound by the norms that have sort of dictated relationships between the congress and the president over time. i mean, he said in particular that he thought the appropriations process was too bipartisan. and of course as your viewers know, because of the senate filibuster, they need some democratic votes in order to end the shutdown or pass the

appropriation bills to begin with. he didn't want to have appropriation bills that, you know, where he was negotiating with democrats. so you know, i think if you go all the way back to project 2025, that he was one of the important authors of -- none of this is a surprise, you know, in terms of this was sort of well documented that this was the plan. of course it didn't include when there's a government shutdown, we will do x, y, and z but definitely included a lot of information on exactly how they would approach the job. and in particular, this sort of embracing of what is referred to as unitary executive theory which essentially says that when the president says that he's going to take care -- that the laws be faithfully executed, it gives the president the authority to do lots of things other presidents had not thought they had the authority to do. host: do you think the legislative filibuster is a good

thing? guest: i think the legislative filibuster can be the only way to sort of protect minority rights sort of in any way because the minority in the house really has very little power and is already the case because of budget reconciliation, which we won't get into a long discussion of that unless you want to. but because of budget reconciliation, it is already the case that very significant things can be done in the senate without having to get any votes from the minority party. now, there are limits to budget reconciliation including the fact it has to be something related to the budget but to kind of expand that to say that, you know, there's nothing that you don't need minority support in the senate for in order to get something passed, you know, you have to kind of remember the

founders -- i always tell my students that the system and the constitution was set up not to promote good things happening but to prevent bad things from happening. so what the filibuster does is it does put a break on legislation as it goes through the congress. host: is protecting political minority rights in congress getting in the way of legislative branch rights projecting its power, as it were, against a creeping executive branch? guest: you know, i think it certainly could in the case where the congress was controlled by a different political party than the president. but again, the -- host: the concern isn't if congress is too weak, dump the filibuster, make congress stronger and then be on more equal footing with the president? guest: that's true. i think you have to think about

all possible situations, and in a situation where the presidency and the congress are both controlled by the same political party, then what it does is it removes any breaks that might be on the president. host: professor phillip joyce is our guest from the university of maryland school of public policy. you can see the school of public's work, spp dot umd.edu. his piece ran in "government executive, the headline, how the president expanded his power without a government. it's by professor joyce and donald kettle. who is that? guest: former dean of the school of public policy at maryland and now professor emeritus. host: how long have you been studying public policy? guest: probably since i got my p.h.d. which started in 1986 and

then i eventually went to work for five years for the congressional budget office which frankly is where i sort of got immersed into it. i thought i knew what i was doing until i got there and then discovered day by day there were lots of nuances i wasn't aware of and i've been teaching and writing especially about the federal budget which is both an interesting and depressing way to spend my life. host: what role does the congressional budget office have in the shutdown and lead up to a shutdown? guest: i would say not very much and certainly not during a shutdown because what the congressional budget office mostly does is in response to legislation being considered by the congress. and as we said, the house has not been in session for more than a month. and so, you know, really the congressional budget office exists to provide information to the congress. and the congress can then choose what it wants to do with that

information. and in particular, the congressional budget office has been telling the congress for a long time that the deficit is big and the debt is big and even presenting the congress with information on how it is that they might take action in order to reduce the debt but in the end, they have no power to do anything other than provide information. and they have in past shutdowns communicated to the congress, for example, what kind of damage the shutdown is doing to the economy. and i have not seen them do that in this particular case but i assume they will at some point. host: how does the congressional budget office stay independent? they're often called the nonpartisan scorekeepers. but when you get down to a budgeting bite, one or the other side will often -- when the conventional budget office puts out some numbers they don't like, we'll say well, they're partisan and using the wrong numbers. guest: a former director of

c.b.o. told me he knew he was doing a good job if he had as many republicans screaming at him as democrats screaming at him. and in this particular case this was bob reischour who was the director i mostly worked for. part of that goes all the way back to alice rublin who was the first director of c.b.o. where she set up the agency from scratch. there was no playbook for how you would set up this agency and she decided very early on they would not make recommendations. somebody once said to me if you ask c.b.o. how much something costs, we'll tell you and if you ask us if it's a good idea we'll tell you how much it costs. so future directors have sort of followed that path, and you know, i think they're very concerned that they not sort of appear to lean too far to one side or the other but it's always going to be the case that if they come out with an

estimate of a cost and one of the other side doesn't like it, then they're going to be accused of being partisan. my experience, i wrote a book about c.b.o. and it's a very dangerous question to ask me. but my experience and sort of everything i observed suggests to me that they tried very hard to play it right down the middle. host: if you won't name it, i will. the congressional budget office is the book, published in 2011. and your other book? guest: i have a couple other, one is called "public budgeting systems" which is a text book and another one called "government performance, why management matters." host: the executive branch power, budgeting issues, all topics we can chat about with professor phillip joyce, with us another 25 minutes. phone lines for democrats, republicans, and independents, you know the numbers. go ahead and call us in and we'll start on the republican

line, louise, you're on with professor joyce. caller: the president at one time used to propose a budget. they would send the budget to the congress and the congress went through the budget and either gave the president what he asked for or didn't. now it seems that congress is writing the budget and tearing up the president's budget who was elected by all the people, the executive, and it seems to me as if the past 30 years or more, i don't know, i've been watching it forever, 40 years or more, and it seems that if the congress wants the power of the budget, not just the purse. they want to create their own way of governing. and they're not elected by the

whole country. so how do we go back to where the president submits a budget and the congress then takes up his budget or her budget, whichever, and then send it to the president and any extra things that the congress wants, they should be negotiating with the executive to see if they can work out a compromise on what each side wants. host: we got the point. president joyce? guest: i'm going to resist giving my federal budgeting course in five minutes but, you know, i love this question. and partly i love this question because i think we should be clear that the president does submit a budget. the president is supposed to submit a budget proposal by the first monday in february every year. then the congress has eight months, roughly, if the president submits the budget on

time. i should say this year, president trump did not submit a full budget. president pump basically printed the numbers of the appropriation bills he wanted the committees to work with. the caller is correct that the president used to have significantly more power in the budget than he does now. what changed that was the 1974 budget impoundment and control act, this conversation we had earlier about the impoundment, that was sort of the approximate cause of congress wanting to reassert its power in the budget process. but at the same time they set up this device called the budget resolution and set up budget committees, and for the specific reason for the congress to be able to respond to the president's budget. now, i think this sort of notion whether we think that the congress is a more democratic body or the president is sort of more democratic, it is true the president is supposed to represent the whole country but members of congress represent

435 congressional districts in 50 states and so, you know, a lot of people would say well, that's really a reflection of democracy. i think it is absolutely the case that we have really fallen down in terms of what the caller mentions about negotiation between the president and the congress. i mean, why are we in this situation right now that we're in? it's not because the democrats haven't voted for the continuing resolution. that's not the initial cause. the initial cause is all the appropriation bills weren't passed and signed into law prior to the beginning of the fiscal year. and by the way, that hasn't happened in almost 30 years. neither side is bathed in glory here. and i think that we need to sort of recognize when we say we want to return to a system more functional, that would be a system where the president submitted a budget and then the congress engaged with the

president and ultimately everything was passed by the beginning of the fiscal year. host: since the modern budgeting process has been set up, congress has passed all its required appropriation measures, all 12, on time four times. in 1977, 1989, 1995, and 1997. guest: right. host: why do we have this process if it doesn't work? guest: that's a really good question. my own view is that this is not a process problem. that is, we don't fail to pass appropriation bills on time because we don't have a good progress. we fail to pass appropriation bills on time because it's a failure of our politics. i think the failure of the budget process is just a reflection of a failure of our politics. if you can tell me how to make our politics work better, then please do. i think a lot of this is a story

about polarization and with partisanship and i'm always a little skeptical of people who think that if only we reform the budget process, we'll get to better budget outcomes. host: has this -- and this is the chart from the pew research center showing the four times congress has passed all of its budget appropriation bills on time, is this leading to the original problem we talked about at the beginning of this conversation, is this as much a part of it, of an expanding executive branch as anything else? guest: yes, i think it's absolutely the case that the congress has failed. host: you're not going to do the job. guest: and if the congress fails, you know, the power of pour is a vacuum and if congress fails, what do you think is going to happen? what's going to happen is that power will shift to the executive branch. now, you know, i don't want to

suggest that there aren't cases in here where the unwillingness of a president to negotiate with the congress is not also part of the problem. host: and thus led to that. guest: right. host: professor joyce, taking your phone calls, dee is waiting in silver spring, maryland, independent line, good morning. caller: hi, good morning, c-span. thank you for your work. our choices now are between a silverback and a grizzly. there's no easy way to deal with things and it will be hurt no matter which way you turn. the thing of it is fundamentally, the system is just broken at the bottom. so if it's broken at the bottom and the people that have the power, in trump's case, to take advantage and make the rules as he pleases, you have to blame both parties that they have allowed the country to come to this. i blame both of them. and this is the result of it.

we need to move to the middle. we need some strong moderates coming in to the arena to straighten this country out. otherwise, america is not going to work. c-span, thank you for what you do. have a good day. host: dee, thanks for the call. professor joyce? guest: you have really good callers with really good questions. so i could not agree more. i'm not a constitutional sighen test nor a political lawyer. but the work the scientists have done suggest exactly what the caller says, that we don't have any moderates anymore. that essentially we've gone to the extremes and there used to be when things worked better, there were these people called, you know, moderate, even conservative democrats and liberal republicans and they

weren't the majority but they were important because they would sort of swing back and forth and kind of help to get things done and now we increasingly just have votes that are wholly partisan, you know, every democrat says one thing and every republican says something else. and that looks more like a parliamentary system, right? that's not sort of the way our system, i think, was set up or sort of functions well, and it's not making things better when we have this kind of rampant redistricting because what redistricting tends to do is eliminate these moderate districts and tends to eliminate these districts where sometimes a republican gets elected and sometimes a democrat will get elected. again, i think those people were very important in terms of the ability to get things done though they're not in the majority. host: who is the best dealmaker, the person who forced that in modern political times in your

mind? guest: if you define "modern" as i don't know, the last 75 years, i would say lyndon johnson. when he was the majority leader of the united states senate. now, he had pretty healthy majorities in part of that time. but even when we're talking about the budget, i was just at a conference recently where there was a discussion of the 1997 balanced budget act which came directly before we had four years of budget surpluses. that was largely negotiated between john spratt who at that point was the ranking democrat on the house budget committee. host: south carolina, i think? guest: from south carolina, thank you. host: and pete domenici from new mexico who was the chair of the budget committee in the senate.

and they got together and basically said we've got to do something about this. and the "this" was the federal deficit. you know, now you don't have people from different parties that are initiating those conversations, right? they didn't agree with each other on how it was that they would do this. but what they did say is this is a problem and something needs to be done about it. host: you say we have good callers, we have good folks that follow along on social media as well. politically homeless tony. here's his question, ifthe executive has outsized power, isn't it because the congress has strayed from the original rationale for a federal government and tried to do too much? coincidentally, this has led to $38 trillion in rising debt. guest: i think -- well, there's a couple ways to look at that. one way is the way he's describing that which essentially is the federal government does more than it sort of did initially and then

you get this sort of question, what's the proper role of the federal government? that's a reasonable conversation to have. but another way to look at that at the debt is that the debt is the cumulative effect of the fact that we have more government than we have been willing to pay for. now, you can go after that in either direction. you can say well, we should do less and that would reduce the debt, or you can say if we really want to have all these programs we need to pay for them. host: we need to pay for them. guest: and one of the real problems here even in this shutdown debate is that the focus is on the portion of the budget that is not growing. so basically appropriated spending accounts for about 25% of the budget. the other 75% of the budget which is, by the way, not affected by the shutdown is interest on the debt and so-called mandatory spending programs. and those mandatory spending

programs are medicare, medicaid, social security primarily and what those programs have in common is we have said there are particular people eligible to receive funds for those programs and as long as they continue to meet those eligibility requirements they tend to get money from the federal government. because we have an aging population, people are living longer, great for them that they're living longer, not great for the federal government. right? those programs just sort of continue and continue to grow, and we are facing, you know, a point in time when we aren't going to have enough money in the social security trust funds to make all the payments that have been promised which is a microcosm of the larger problem i was describing in that we have decided we want to provide benefits sort of in excess of the revenues that come in to pay for them. host: in the more immediate time frame, what's your best guess

for how and when the shutdown will end? guest: i wrote down all the dates that i had heard and why. and you know, i'll give you all of them. one is that i heard your conversation, you know, just before i came on with "the times" white house reporter, you know, and one is october 31 is another date for a military payday. it's not entirely clear they can, quote, find the money to make that payment. the november 1 snap deadline. another date i heard is well, not until after the elections in virginia and new jersey to kind of see what happens coming out of those. maybe it makes one side or the other feel like they want to compromise. host: make it more vulnerable? guest: or the existing c.r., ironically, that there's been a discussion that, you know, the

democrats in the senate should just vote for this. it expires november 21. let's say they voted for it tomorrow, they've still got a looming deadline on november 21, so that suggests to me, you know, this problem needs to be solved not just between now and obvious 21 but sort of in the long run. the other date i heard is thanksgiving. why thanksgiving, maybe people don't want to be here talking about the shutdown over thanksgiving. host: holidays do have a way of moving things sometimes around here. guest: right. host: time for a couple more calls with professor phillip joyce of the maryland school of policy. if you stick around here after 10:00 a.m., it's probably a couple minutes after, three or four, speaker mike johnson is expected to come out for his monday press conference. reporters are already gathering in the room. so we're going to take you there when he does and we're going to stick with professor joyce until

then and we're going to hear from clayton out of philadelphia, a democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. two questions, first question would be how does the destruction of government property namely the destruction of the east wing, how does that affect the budget? and two, what would evert derksen have to say about the budget as we speak? host: take them in whatever order you want. guest: let me talk about evert dirkson because that would have been a good answer to when it was we actually had leaders that actually led. host: you're saying there's a reason there's a building named after him? guest: exactly. the senator was in the congress

and i wasn't and watched prior to that and he is someone willing to work across the aisle. first, i think he would be appalled at the congress creeding -- ceding his power in this way. but he would be on the frontlines of saying, let's get something done. in terms of the white house, you know, i have not, i will admit, not looked into, you know, what it is -- what i've heard is there is private money coming in that's sort of paying for this. that to me is not sufficient in the sense that private money coming in to the government still normally would have to be appropriated by the congress. that is quite fine for somebody to decide, maybe you'd consider it patriotic for someone to decide they want to give money to the government. that doesn't change clause 1,

article 9 of the constitution that says no money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequences over appropriations made by law. by the way, this is the same issue with the $130 million that's allegedly going to be given to pay the troops is it's just fine for somebody to decide to take their money and give it to the government, but what they can't really do is say, you can only spend it for this. when i pay my taxes, i don't say i'm going to pay my taxes but i really only want my tax money to be used for x, y, and z and it goes in the treasury and then the congress appropriates the money. it feels to me, not having looked at this in great detail, it feels to me that if this ultimately is going to have no effect on the federal budget that the way that should happen is that the donation should be made and then there should be an appropriation made in order to do whatever renovations are going to be done for the white house. host: what would be the logical extreme of that happening,

people purchasing certain legislation? guest: oh, yeah. i think when -- if you basically said that anybody could just sort of come in and privately fund whatever kind of activity they wanted, then, you know, then in the end what that means is that, you know, you have something you think the government should be doing that's going to benefit you in some way and you just sort of come in and say i'm going to set this money aside. it's not that there isn't money that's set aside that can only be used for a particular purpose. for example, if you pay a fee to go into the national park, all that money goes to offset the costs of the national park service. but that's because the law says that. that's because congress has sort of permitted that to happen. so the congress could also make a sort of blanket permission, you know, for money like that to be used for that purpose without

having to kind of go through the process of appropriating the money. but again, that would start with the congress having said it could be done in that way. it doesn't just happen because someone woke up one morning and decided to give money. host: what about gifts perhaps in the form of an airplane to become the new air force 1? guest: again, my understanding is that there are rules around gifts, you know. and again, i haven't looked at this in detail, you know, but i think what all these things have in common is there are established processes and those established processes should be followed. host: time for just a couple more calls here maybe before the speaker comes out for his monday press conference. out to astoria, oregon, mike, republican, go ahead. caller: you know, i see the democrats blame the republicans and the republican blame the democrats. i blame the american people.

we keep electing the same people into the senate and to the congress and we expect something different from them. we need change. we need term limits to get some of these older people that are so stuck in their ways out of the office. that's about all i have to say. host: how would you respond? guest: thanks very much. first, i was in astoria last spring and it's beautiful. so congratulations for living there. host: i've never been. guest: you know, i think that the -- you know, i think that it is largely sort of correct that we have to ask the question, what should we as the public do if we don't like what our elected officials are doing? and we do have the ability, you know, to sort of vote them out of office. and you know, it would be hard to get into a long discussion of

term limits, but i do think that there's a reasonable point of view out there that says that maybe part of the problem is that we have sort of people whof people who are current politicians who may be sort of disconnected from what the public wants. but on the other hand, there are people saying we have term limits they're called elections. if you don't want the people in office you can vote them out. host: judy and kentucky says do you think ai would help with the budget? guest: we should ask it. i think it would have an answer. i fear that its answer would not get it elected. host: what you mean? guest: i think you asked a question about the budget what ai would say, i'm just guessing, is it looks to me like the only we out of this problem meanings of 38 trillion dollar debt,

would be to both raise taxes and to cut spending mostly mandatory spending programs. there's a reason they wouldn't do either those things because they are politically unpopular but we have an entire party opposed to raising taxes and another party that is pretty resistant to cutting mandatory spending programs, that's the democrats. in my view having looked at the budget, we have to do both of those things. we cannot get there from here by focusing on the 15% budget we can focus on. host: david from flemington, new jersey, independent. good morning you are on with professor joyce. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. in regard to russell vought and project 2025, the big targets, and it's always a target for the conservatives, head start.

i want to point out the big problem with headstart is not whether there's headstart or not headstart, it is getting the community action programs that give these multi million dollars in grants for the federal government to run it. the federal government needs to run headstart directly. with the community action program does in central new jersey that runs this headstart is it impoverished as it workers, paying them barely minimum wage so they cannot qualify for snap, they cannot qualify for medicaid and the executives in the community action program like this everywhere in america, they take millions of dollars every year and pay themselves massive salaries and they impoverish these people going out into these homes. it's one third impoverished people below the poverty line,

they seized on it the minute it fell below the poverty line the community action program headquartered in new jersey in philipsburg and they exploit these workers. host: running short on time. we will try to get professor joyce a chance to respond. guest: real quick, you know far more about headstart than i do. i would just sort of point out the proposal to have the federal government take over headstart directly i would assume that means you are not in any way in favor for the trump administration is urging which is a limiting the department of education because this would basically mean an expansion of the responsibilities of the department of education. and it's always the case in any case where you have a contractual relationship you can end up in a situation host: like you described. host:host: speaker johnson coming out, let me thank professor philip choice -- philip joyce.

appreciate it veuc